Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst had for years kept on hisstate Web site a transcript of a 2007 speech he made supporting a guest worker program for illegal immigrants. Now it’s gone, and the Young Conservatives of Texas has filed an open records request to check it out.

The Austin-based group supports Ted Cruz, who is facing off in a July 31 Republican runoff election against Dewhurst in a bid for the U.S. Senate seat of Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is retiring.

The winner is most likely to head to Washington in the heavily Republican state.

Dewhurst’s 2007 speech was delivered when he was being honored as “Mr. South Texas” in Laredo.

“We need a human presence at the border and a humane presence at the border,” Dewhurst said. “I support secure borders both North and South and I support a guest worker program for those here today illegally. Labor and skilled workers are critical to our Texas economy. Our federal government needs to get its act together.”

Hard-line conservatives, including the young conservative group, are against anything with a whiff of amnesty for workers illegally in the U.S.

The open records request has as much to do with the removal of the statement from public view, though, as the actual statement.

In a press release, Jeff Morris, chairman of the Young Conservatives of Texas, said, “We have known throughout this campaign that the Lt. Governor is running away from his record. But it is appalling that Mr. Dewhurst would try to delete the past in his effort to pull the wool over Texas voters’ eyes. If he expects to be our next Senator, Mr. Dewhurst should stand-by his moderate record and apologize for it, not try to hide from it, or deceive voters about it. We have filed our open records request so that Texas voters can know the full truth about David Dewhurst’s record.”